Robert Mattes – författare

This book is a fascinating exploration of public opinion in sub-Saharan Africa. Based on the Afrobarometer, a comprehensive cross-national survey research project, it reveals what ordinary Africans think about democracy and market reform, subjects on which almost nothing is otherwise known. The authors find that support for democracy in Africa is wide but shallow and that Africans feel trapped between state and market. Beyond multiparty elections, people want clean and accountable government. They will accept economic structural adjustment only if it is accompanied by an effective state, the availability of jobs, and an equitable society. What are the origins of these attitudes? Far from being constrained by social structure and cultural values, Africans learn about reform on the basis of knowledge, reasoning, and experience. Weighing supply and demand for reform, the authors reach cautious conclusions about the varying prospects of African countries for attaining fully-fledged democracy and markets.0

This book is a fascinating exploration of public opinion in sub-Saharan Africa. Based on the Afrobarometer, a comprehensive cross-national survey research project, it reveals what ordinary Africans think about democracy and market reform, subjects on which almost nothing is otherwise known. The authors find that support for democracy in Africa is wide but shallow and that Africans feel trapped between state and market. Beyond multiparty elections, people want clean and accountable government. They will accept economic structural adjustment only if it is accompanied by an effective state, the availability of jobs, and an equitable society. What are the origins of these attitudes? Far from being constrained by social structure and cultural values, Africans learn about reform on the basis of knowledge, reasoning, and experience. Weighing supply and demand for reform, the authors reach cautious conclusions about the varying prospects of African countries for attaining fully-fledged democracy and markets.0

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, University of Freiburg (Englisches Seminar), course: Hauptseminar Prosody, language: English, abstract: Declination in prosody refers to the fact that the pitch of the voice is most commonly on average lower at the end of a prosodic unit than it is at the beginning, especially in controlled (read) speech. The main concerns of this paper are the analysis and comparison of the paragraph- declination of read speech of native and non-native speakers of English. More precisely, the analysis and comparison of the paragraph-pitch-patterns in the English of a native speaker and of a speaker with the tone language Chinese as her native language. Do distinct differences between the pitch-curves (i.e. the curves of the F0-formants) exist, and, if so, what might be the reasons for those differences? Does the particular feature of the tone language Chinese, i.e. the word-meaning-defining pitch, in any way affect paragraph-declination in L2-English? Or does this feature have no effect on paragraph-declination at all, maybe for physiological reasons? For this purpose, two speech samples of read speech will be divided into paratones and the pitch-curves of the paratones of the intonation and tone language will then be measured and compared. But beforehand, a brief outline of the main differences between tone and intonation languages will be provided. A short definition of declination in prosody and two ways of defining prosodic domains follow.

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, University of Freiburg (Englisches Seminar), course: Einfuhrung in die Literaturwissenschaft, language: English, abstract: Ernest Miller Hemingway - a short story writer, novelist, deep-sea fisher, soldier, hunter and reporter- and one of the most important writers of the 20th century. Well known for his books like e.g. A Farewell To Arms, To Have and Have Not, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Across the River and into the Trees and especially the novelette: The Old Man and The Sea. I would like to present here another, maybe less popular but in no case less interesting short story of Ernest Hemingway: The Killers. `The Killers` was published in 1927 as a part of the short story collection `Men without women`. When releasing `The Killers`, Hemingway was already known as one of the most important representatives of the so-called`lost-generation` (one year before Ernest Hemingway made his name with the novel `The Sun Also Rises` which catches the post-war mood of disillusion). This generation of North-American authors of the 1920s participated as soldiers or, like Hemingway did, as volunteers with the ambulance in World War I and returned home: frustrated, cynical and self-confidently indifferent towards life. In the following essay I would like to give a short summary of Hemingway sbiography first. This is followed by an exposition ( i.e. setting, time, main characters)and a brief outline of the story. The next focus will be on the structure of the story: How it starts, how it develops and how it ends. Then I continue with the characterization of the main characters ( the direct or indirect characterization and the relationships between the characters ). After this, I examine the technique ( the point of view, relationship between narrator and reader ) and the style of narration . Symbols, motives and pictures will be dealt with in the last but one part of my essay. Finally, I would like to focus on possible parallels between The Killers and Ernest Hemingway s biographical or personal background respectively.